Do not be surprised if in the future the 10x is reduced by Steemit Inc and then it will be up to the community to decide who will have access
They need to be very careful about this.
All communities have people leaving them - nations have people dying or emigrating, businesses have staff leaving, clubs have people leaving because they have other things to do or because they've gotten bored, places like Facebook have people leaving simply because it's no longer fashionable.
This is the normal state of things, and you always have to offset it by new blood. So nations have babies being born and immigrants coming in, businesses hire new staff to replace those who have left, clubs recruit new members, facebook tries to get new sign-us through advertising etc.
If you take the stance of discouraging or not permitting new people to join, but existing members leave at the same rate (because they're bored, or have family or work commitments, or because they've found a better site for their work), then what happens is your community shrinks and then dies. The last few members can try valiantly to make up for the shrinkage by increasing activity, but even they eventually get tired.
The danger for steemit is that if it starts to shrink in that way (or worse get replaced with a better community and coin), then the price goes down too. So the insiders who worked to hard to freeze out new blood are the ones who lose.
I think the idea is that the communities will be able to pool their resources and onboard at a much higher rate and at a much more personal level than currently. I see communities with a lot more friends and families etc being built this way rather than people coming in largely blind and having to stumble through a 'one-size-fits- all' mould.